Nick must have introduced me to Nigel Woods at some point last year and I’m pretty sure that at that very first meeting, Nigel said that he would come out for a run with us. And so it was that, sometime over a year later, Nigel finally pitched up at the house at 7am on Wednesday morning.
Alas Nick had cried off and I wasn’t expecting Nigel until half past, so he found me deep (actually, not so deep as that’s pretty hard work!) in meditation and not at all ready.
Still, Kim came down in her dressing gown to amuse him while I got ready and we were out at a good time.
There was sufficient an autumn chill for Nigel to initially run with his sleeves covering his hands and he confessed afterwards that he had leaden legs along that first section, but it wasn’t really that cold and the sun filtering through the trees warmed our souls… and the run warmed the rest of us pretty quickly.
We ran out to the Royal Oak, up through Hundred Acre Woods and looped around the Industrial Estate before returning down the magical path and across the Common, which looked glorious in the morning sun.
Nigel had sought to manage my expectations about his running speed over the course of the last year, but he was ample fast enough for this morning jaunt and even demonstrated a Bok-like increase in speed ahead of the finish.
We ran for a modest 50 or 52 minutes (sorry, I forget now, sitting here in the teahouse tapping away on my lap-top) and covered 5.2 miles – at least 6mph, if my maths is correct.